The cornerstone of an academic discipline is its classic textbooks, which are worth treasuring, exploring and learning from. Teaching Chinese as a second/foreign language has been an academic discipline for over 60 years. Before it became an independent discipline, pioneers, researchers and teachers in the field had put a lot of effort into textbook development and published many Chinese teaching materials whose ideas, contents and layouts are worth review and further research. 

Modern Chinese Reader was the earliest CFL teaching material in the People’s Republic of China. Authored by the staff of Peking University Chinese Language Program for International Students, the book consists of 72 lessons divided into two volumes. The arrangements of its contents and the grammar system thus established have provided guidance and reference for successors in CFL teaching and textbook development and research.

Modern Chinese Reader was the first CFL teaching material in the People’s Republic of China, which formed the basis for CFL pedagogical grammar and provided a foundation for the writing of later CFL teaching materials. It was written by the staff of Peking University Chinese Language Program for International Students (formerly Tsinghua Chinese Language Program for Eastern European Exchange Students, started in 1950), with Zhou Peiyuan as the head, Zhou Zumo, Deng Yi and Wang Huan as teaching and research team leaders, and the students coming from Eastern European countries, North Korea, Mongolia, etc.

1. A classic revamped – This is a high quality scanned version of the 1958 first edition, being rid of such printing problems as missing characters and blurry text in the original impression;

2. Additional academic value – A memoir essay by Zhong Qin, a coauthor of the book, has been added in the book to introduce the development process and ideas so that the reader can learn more about how the book was developed back then.  

For textbook developers, educational researchers, teachers and students in the field of Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages (TCSOL)